U.S. Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi went toe-to-toe with Democrat senators on Wednesday during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
During a particularly heated back-and-forth with Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), the former Florida attorney general held her own, telling him, “I’m not going to be bullied by you.”
And that proved to be the case as she fielded questions from Democrats on everything from the 2020 election to whether she would allow the White House to dictate her stewardship of the Justice Department.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), for example, asked if Bondi had “the intestinal fortitude” to tell President-elect Donald Trump that he lost the 2020 election.
“What I can tell you is, I will never play politics,” Bondi replied. “You’re trying to engage me in a gotcha. I won’t do it. I won’t play politics with any investigation—like you did, leaking your colleague [former Rep.] Devin Nunes’s memo.”
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), meanwhile, asked if Bondi would drop a case “grounded in facts and law” at the White House’s direction.
“Senator, if I thought that would happen, I would not be sitting here today,” Bondi said. “That will not happen. Every case will be prosecuted based on the facts and the law that is applied in good faith, period.”
The Justice Department’s independence came up repeatedly throughout the hearing as Democrats raised concerns over Bondi’s personal friendship with Trump.
Multiple senators asked if she and Trump had discussed prosecuting his political opponents, including special counsel Jack Smith, President Joe Biden, and members of the Jan. 6 Select Committee.
Bondi said no such conversations had taken place.
“No one will be prosecuted, investigated because they are a political opponent,” she said. “That’s what we’ve seen for the last four years in this administration.”
Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) agreed with that assessment, finding his Democrat colleagues’ concerns to be “ironic.”
“Merrick Garland probably gets however many gold stars you want to give for the most politicized, weaponized Department of Justice we have ever seen,” Schmitt said.
Bondi focused her prepared remarks on what she envisions for the Justice Department going forward: a return to the rule of law.
“If confirmed as the next attorney general of the United States, my overriding objective will be to return the Department of Justice to its core mission of keeping Americans safe and vigorously prosecuting criminals,” she said.
“If confirmed, I will do everything in my power and it will be my great responsibility to make America safe again.”
—Samantha Flom
RUBIO WINS PRAISE AT HEARING
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee heard from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of state nominee, on Jan. 15.
Setting the scene for Trump’s “America First” brand of foreign policy, Rubio described a post-Cold War trend in which the United States has put the advancement of a “liberal world order” ahead of its own national interests.
Rubio said this focus on advancing the global order has led the United States to adopt policies that have “shrunk the middle class, left the working class in crisis, collapsed our industrial capacity, and have pushed critical supply chains into the hands of adversaries and of rivals.”
While the United States has promoted this post-Cold War order, Rubio said other nations, including competitors like China, have furthered their interests.
With Trump’s election win, Rubio argued there is now a mandate for “a strong America, engaged in the world but guided by a clear objective to promote peace abroad, and security and prosperity here at home.”
In the hearing, Rubio backed Trump’s calls for negotiations to end the ongoing Russia–Ukraine war, stating the fighting had reached a stalemate and President Joe Biden’s administration hadn’t defined a clear end goal for U.S. support for Ukraine.
A longtime China hawk, Rubio described the People’s Republic of China as “the most potent and dangerous, near-peer adversary this nation has ever confronted.”
To deter the PRC from seizing Taiwan by force, Rubio said he’ll continue to promote a so-called “porcupine strategy” of arming the democratic island to a point where an invasion becomes too costly of a proposition for Beijing.
Having served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio has rapport with many of the same senators who considered his nomination and won praise from across the aisle.
“We may have policy disagreements, but we’ve had multiple areas of convergence over the time we’ve served here in the Senate together,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said.
“What you have seen is a nominee that is extremely well-prepared,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said.
—Ryan Morgan
ISRAEL-HAMAS CEASEFIRE REACHED
After months of negotiations, a temporary cease-fire has been reached between Israel and Hamas, the United States, and Qatar announced on Wednesday.
Qatar has been an intermediary between the two warring sides that have been at it since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel.
The six-week pause in fighting will begin on Sunday. It’s meant to allow for negotiations to permanently end the war.
Thirty-three hostages, including two Americans—Keith Siegel and Sagui Dekel-Chen—will be released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
The Israeli military will withdraw from parts of Gaza but remain in parts such as the critical Philadelphi corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border.
If negotiations are ongoing beyond six weeks, the cease-fire will continue.
This is the second pause in fighting reached between the two with the first one being in November 2023 that consisted of an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners.
The negotiations that led to Wednesday’s cease-fire were the result of Qatar and the Biden administration alongside the incoming Trump administration with Steve Witkoff, the incoming Mideast envoy, running point for the latter.
The deal could have been reached in December, but Hamas rejected a demand that there be a list of hostages that would be released in the first phase, an administration official told reporters.
“Hamas would say things like, ‘Well, we’re not going to know until there’s a week-long cease-fire to know where the hostages are,’ all of which we know is completely untrue,” continued the official.
“And so we held the line and basically left the table until Hamas agreed to the hostage list. They did agree to the hostage list.”
—Jackson Richman
BOOKMARKS
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Jan. 15 said she thought President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico could damage the U.S. auto industry. “Every time a Michigan auto part crosses over the border and gets taxed, those costs will be passed on to you at the dealership,” she said.
Los Angeles County has launched an online, interactive map that allows residents to check if their home was damaged in the wildfires that have recently torn through the area. The tool may help residents keep track of the damage to their homes in evacuated areas where the fire is out, but it is still not safe to return.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) has announced she will support Pete Hegseth’s confirmation as Secretary of Defense. She had previously expressed doubts about Hegseth, following allegations of sexual assault, and remarks he made about women serving combat roles in the military.
The Supreme Court is weighing whether or not a Texas rule requiring age verification for porn websites is a violation of the First Amendment. Opponents of the law have argued that web filters are enough to keep kids from viewing the material, but Ethics and Public Policy Center fellow Brad Littlejohn said there are easy ways to bypass such security features.
The National Association of Manufacturers said the U.S. economy risks losing $1.1 trillion if Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is allowed to expire. However, the Congressional Budget Office says the tax cuts should be axed, resulting in more revenue for the government, providing an overall long term benefit.
—Stacy Robinson